Learning to drive can be a very scary experience, especially for the parent who’s teaching his or her 15 year old to drive. But sometimes we forget how hard it is for the new driver, who’s suddenly introduced to a whole new world that the rest of us take for granted. New drivers start out lacking any confidence.
I first learned to drive on my motorcycle, and you could drive a motorcycle alone if you had a learner’s permit, you just couldn’t drive on the freeway or after dark. I still remember my first extended trip out of Upland: I drove all the way to Corona and back. Saying that I had a lack of confidence is an understatement...I was totally uncertain about what I was doing. But as you all know, gradually we learn to drive and we gain a certain sense of confidence.
Well in many ways the spiritual journey of following Jesus as His disciple is similar to that. You see, the Bible often pictures the spiritual life as being like a journey. And when we begin a journey, we lack confidence, we’re unsure of ourselves, doubtful of our ability to stay on the path. In fact it’s this lack of confidence that keeps many of my unchurched friends away from the Christian faith. One of my friends is an agnostic, and he knows that there’s something real spiritually, but he feels totally unqualified to figure out what it is...so he just lives like as an agnostic. Another one of my unchurched friends is totally confused because he’s run into Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, seminary professors, and his wife works at a new age store...so he doesn’t know what to think. Yet even those who take the time to investigate the spiritual journey and make a faith commitment to Jesus Christ often lack confidence in the spiritual journey. When they’re confronted with a teaching they often don’t know how to evaluate whether it’s taking them away from the journey or not. When they find forks in the road of the spiritual journey they become paralyzed with which way to go. In many ways they’re like new drivers, still learning and building confidence.
Ten years ago I was in a major car accident. A strange thing about that accident: I suddenly lost my confidence in my driving ability and it was like I was starting all over again. The first time I got behind the wheel after my accident my heart started racing, my palms got sweaty, and I realized that I was unsure of myself. In the spiritual journey when people go through a major spiritual crisis they often lose their confidence as well. So if you’re here today and you’re relatively new to the spiritual journey or if something has shaken your confidence in the journey, I’m going to share with you today how to walk with confidence. If you’re here and you already feel confident, use the message today to make sure your confidence in being found in the right source.
Today we finish our series A ROADMAP FOR THE JOURNEY through the New Testament book of 1 John. In this series we’ve seen how to find joy in the spiritual journey, we’ve listened to God’s call to authenticity, we’ve talked about focusing on the final destination and getting our bearings. But today we’re going to look at four ways to walk in confidence in the spiritual journey.
I. A Prayer Filled Life (5:14-17).
Let me just give you the first way to walk in confidence: We walk with confidence in the spiritual journey by DEVELOPING A PRAYER FILLED LIFE.
Now let’s look at verses 14 through 17 together. John starts by identifying a "confidence" that rightly belongs to followers of Jesus Christ. This word "confidence" means "a state of boldness and confidence, even in the face of intimidating circumstances" (Louw and Nida, Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 25:158). This is the fourth time John has used this word, and it’s roots go back to the rise of democracy in ancient Greece, that every citizen had "freedom of speech" or "confidence to say what was on his mind" without fear of reprisal or retaliation.
This confidence that belongs to followers of Jesus is the ability to ask God for anything...to pray. Christians can come to God uninhibited, full of assurance and freedom of speech. Many Christians don’t know they have this privilege, they feel as if they have to get everything right before they ask God for something...the right setting, the right time, the right place.
But John says it doesn’t matter when or where, why or how, that the follower of Jesus Christ possesses this confidence.
Now the condition to receive what we ask is the condition of God’s will. The Greek word translated "will" here can be used two distinct ways. First it can mean someone’s inmost desire, someone’s heart’s desire (Louw and Nida 25.2). Or it can mean something that’s planned or intended (Louw and Nida 30.59). I think both meanings come together whenever we read of God’s will, because God’s will reflects God’s heart--what he desires--and God’s plan in our world. I believe that praying according to God’s will is exactly the same thing that the Bible means when it tells us to pray in Jesus’ name. To pray according to the will of God is to pray according to the heart of God and the plan of God. When we learn to pray this way God is responsive to our requests.
John’s not saying that God is in the dark about our prayer requests if they’re not in line with his will. This word "hear" is often used in the Bible to describe responsiveness. We can be sure that God’s responsiveness will lead us to possess the very things we’re asking God for because they reflect his heart and his plan. This of course assumes we know enough about the heart of God and the plan of God to pray this way.
You see according to the Bible prayer’s not an attempt to twist God’s arm and get him to do what we want him to do, but it’s a personal relationship where our will is molded to his will, our heart is made to beat in tune with his heart. As we learn to pray according to God’s heart and God’s plan, we place ourselves in a position to be instruments of God’s heart and God’s plan, and in effect he works out the answers to our requests through us. This is the heart of prayer...learning to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Verses 14 and 15 are really describing our own requests about our own needs, what we call petition. Verses 16 through 17 describe our prayer for other people. When we seen another follower of Jesus fall into sin, we’re called to pray for that person. We’re not supposed to immediately call our friends and say, "Do you know what I just saw Fred do?" Our first response is prayer...to lift that person up to the throne of God, to seek the heart of God and the plan of God in that person’s life. The Scottish preacher Sidlow Baxter once said, "People may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons--but they are helpless against our prayers."
Now this whole "sin that leads to death" and "sin that doesn’t lead to death" matter is confusing. This is where the Roman Catholic church gets its idea of mortal sins and venial sins, that some sins can’t be forgiven and other sins can be forgiven. If that’s what John’s talking about I wish he’d given us a list of which sins are mortal and which one’s aren’t so we don’t have to guess! Another possibility is that these are sins that actually lead to the physical death. In 1 Cor 11 we read that some of Christians who’d abused the Lord’s Supper had actually died as a result of God’s discipline. That doesn’t mean they weren’t Christians, but it does mean that they had rebelled against God to the point that he ended their physical lives so they wouldn’t rebel against him any more. This is a real possibility here, and that would mean that John is telling us to not pray for people who’ve died under God’s discipline for their sins. Whatever this means, the point is to pray for the needs of other people, especially when we see them struggling.
This is the prayer filled life, a life that constantly brings our own needs and the needs of other people before the throne of God. This is the ability to pray with confidence--the boldness and freedom that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.
When I first came to know Jesus Christ, I didn’t know how to pray this way…all I knew how to do was say prayers, you know, like the Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer. But here we find that followers of Jesus possess an incredibly confidence that can build their confidence in the spiritual journey. Are you learning to live a prayer filled life.
II. A Growth Focused Life (5:18).
Now let me give you the next critical part of walking in confidence: We walk with confidence in the spiritual journey by developing A GROWTH FOCUSED LIFE.
Now let’s look at v. 18 together. Now this verse literally reads, "Anyone born of God does not sin." We ran into this same difficulty back in chapter, where he wrote that "no one who abides in Christ sins" (3:18). This sounds like John is talking about sinless perfection in our lives, and some Christian groups have actually taken it that way. But that would contradict what he said in chapter one verse 8, when he said, "if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" and then in 1:10, "if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us."
The New International Version of the Bible—the translation printed in our outline--rightly observes that the verb sin is in the present tense, emphasizing the continual and persistent person who seeks a lifestyle of sin. John’s saying that a person who undergoes such a thorough transformation as a new birth by God can’t continue on in his or her life as if nothing’s happened. A person born of God is now alive spiritually, and thus unable to live the same way he or she lived before.
This person who’s entered into the spiritual journey is now kept safe by God, protected from slipping back into the way they lived before. Because of this unceasing, constant protection, the evil one can’t "harm" or literally "touch" the true child of God. Sure we can be harassed and tempted, but once we’ve been born of God, God puts a "hands off" sign on our lives that not even Satan himself can disobey. The most he can do his harass us, gaining access into our lives only by our own invitation through our own disobedience, but he can’t grab us against our will or tear us away from the God who protects us. This constant protection and "hands off" sign on our lives gives us space to grow, and that’s really what John is talking about here, the growth focused life.The spiritual journey is a life of constant progress into spiritual maturity. We will never reach a point in our spiritual journey when we arrive and no longer need to press forward to grow.
I meet lots of people who’ve been Christians for a long time who stop growing, they get stuck and stagnant. When the world famous cellist Pablo Casals turned 95 a reporter asked him, "Mr. Casals, you’re 95 and the greatest cellist who’s ever lived. Why do you still practice six hours a day?" His answer? "Because I think I’m still making progress" (Bits and Pieces, 6/24/93, p. 12). Are you still making progress? What’s your plan to keep growing? You’ll develop confidence in the journey if you have a growth focused life.
III. A Truth Filled Life (5:19-20).
Now let me give you the third ingredient to walking with confidence: We walk with confidence in our spiritual journey by developing A TRUTH FILLED LIFE.
Now let’s look at verses 19 and 20. Notice the repetition of the phrase "we know." It’s used three times in these two verses. John is describing realities that we can know for sure, he’s dealing with a truth filled life, and that knowing that truth builds confidence in our spiritual journey.
Now what is it we can know for sure as truth? We can know for sure that we’re God’s children. When we place our trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation and enter into the spiritual journey, God adopts us into his family. John’s talked a lot about this truth in 1 John.
We can also know for sure that the whole world is under the control of Satan. This literally reads, "The whole world lies in the arms of the evil one" as if the world is in an eternal embrace with Satan. Notice the contrast with v. 18: While Satan can’t touch the true child of God, he embraces the world system of culture and society we live in. No wonder there are things like impeachment hearings, presidential scandals, pornography, crime, and so forth?
We also know for sure that God’s Son came to give us understanding of these things. The coming of God’s Son is what Christmas is all about, celebrating the advent--the coming--of Jesus into the world. He not only came to bring us salvation from our sins, but he also came to give us understanding, so we’re not left with hunches and guesses about God and God’s ways. This word "understanding" it means a pattern of thought, it’s similar to what people today call a "world view." Jesus came so we could develop a God focused, a Christ given world view, so we could look at our lives, our church, our community, and our nation through the filter of God’s truth, and see things the way God sees them. God is by nature truthful. Since God is true, we stand in relationship with that truth. Then at the end of v. 20 John calls Jesus "the true God and eternal life" This is the clearest indication of Christ’s Godhood in the whole letter of 1 John.
Now how do we develop a truth filled life? The obvious answer is by immersing ourselves in God’s truth...which is given to us in the Bible. The bible claims to give us all the truth we need to know in order to know God, walk with God, love God, and follow God in the spiritual journey. This is why we’re a Bible church, why we offer Bible studies, why I teach out of the Bible and give the Growth Guide each week for further study, because I know that if you fill your life with truth you’ll develop confidence in the spiritual journey. The more truth you know and apply, the more you’ll know God because he’s the true God. The truth filled life will give us confidence in the journey.
IV. A Faithful Life (5:21).
Now let me give you the final ingredient to walking with confidence: We walk with confidence in our spiritual journey by developing A FAITHFUL LIFE.
Let’s look at the final verse of John’s letter.
The word "keep yourselves" means to watch something closely, like a guard watching over a prisoner or a bodyguard protecting a celebrity. Gary Burge observes, "We must be diligent and alert--never passive--when it comes to taking care of ourselves" (218). In other words, this is something only you can do for yourself, your parents can’t do it for you, your spouse can’t do it for you, your church can’t do it for you, I can’t do it for you, but each of us must guard our own lives.
We’re told to guard ourselves against idols. Now in the ancient world an idol was a carved image of a god or goddess, something that a craftsman made and that people bowed down to in worship. The first two of the ten commandments both forbid idolatry. Now in our modern world we rarely encounter literal idols made of wood or metal, but there are still lots of false gods that clamor for our attention in our culture today. An idol is anything that squeezes God out of the center position towards the margin of my life (Jackman, The Message of John’s Letters 172). One definition of an idol is "trusting people, possessions or positions to do for me what only God can do."
The problem of idols is essentially a problem of faithfulness. When we come to know Christ personally we enter into a relationship of faithfulness, where he promises to stay with us, walk with us, forgive our sins, and where we promise to walk with him, obey him, and trust him. When we embrace an idol--a god substitute--we are unfaithful to that promise, like a spouse who breaks a marriage vow. The main idols Christians struggle with in our culture today are the idols of materialism, success, adventure, leisure, and comfort.
God invites us to walk the spiritual journey with confidence. We can do that by developing a prayer filled life, a growth focused life, a truth filled life, and a faithful life. These are basics staples of the spiritual journey, yet they’re things we often neglect. As we finish 1 John God invites us to renew our commitment to prayer, growth, truth and faithfulness.
